Contact with child in care

In re S (a child) (care proceedings: contact) FD TLR 22 September

The local authority appealed against an order in the Family Proceedings Court granting the mother of a one-month-old baby in care, contact not only for four hours a day Monday to Friday, but also for two hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. In Re M (care proceedings: judicial review) [2003] 2 FLR 171, 183 Mr Justice Munby had said: ‘If a baby is to be removed from his mother, one would normally expect arrangements to be made by the local authority to facilitate contact on a regular and generous basis … those arrangements must be driven by the needs of the family, not stunted by lack of resources. Typically, if this is what the parents want, one will be looking to contact most days of the week and for a lengthy period.’ The words ‘most days of the week’ did not imply daily contact including weekends and the reference to ‘lack of resources’ was not intended to mean that the resources were a wholly irrelevant consideration. It was clear that the practicalities of arranging contact by a mother to a baby had to be borne in mind as part of deciding what quantum of contact would constitute reasonable or appropriate contact under s34 of the Children Act 1989, within which decision-making process at least some regard must generally be had to the extent to which the quantum of contact would be likely to impose unreasonable burdens either on the foster carer’s ability to sustain it and/or on the resources of the local authority to facilitate it. Bearing in mind all the relevant considerations, the order was not outside the broad ambit of discretion vested in the Family Proceedings Court given that it was intended to run for only a number of weeks before being reviewed.